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Monthly Archives: August 2010

John C. Bogle is without a doubt one of the most listened-to experts on mutual funds in the world. And he should be. Having created the massive Vanguard fund complex and written eight books on the topic, the depth of his knowledge is unmatched.

If hindsight is 20/20, maybe current perception is more like 50/50. Loads of economists and other experts have recently declared that the bond market has swelled into an unsustainable bubble. Wharton’s Jeremy Siegel among them.

Yale Professor William Goetzmann draws a parallel between the commercial mortgage-backed securities of recent years, and a real estate bond boom in the 1920s. A boom he argues led to the stock market crash of 1929.

“By nearly every measure,” he and his co-author notes, “real estate securities were as toxic in the 1930s as they are now.”

In an interesting paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, he and Frank Newman, a former research assistant at the Yale School of Management, dig into the bonds that financed the greatest boom in the building of skyscrapers ever. In 1925, 23% of all corporate debt were these bonds. Nine years later, the entire class of investments had nearly vanished. Continue reading →

Yesterday the New York Times ran a front page piece about how risk-averse investors have become. Long-time personal business correspondent Gerri Willis warns against becoming too conservative.

Willis was CNN’s face of personal finance for many years. Now she hosts her own shows The Willis Report at 5PM EST on Fox Business Network. She calls it “personal finance plus” and covers saving and investing as well as keeping a close on “the money you’re giving to the Federal government as tax dollars.” She spoke to Nanette Byrnes from Fox Studios in New York City and here is an edited transcript of their conversation. Continue reading →

Jeremy Siegel, Wharton professor and author of well-known Stocks For The Long Run, published an article this week in the Wall St. Journal saying that we are in a bond bubble. Bubbles are periods of irrational price appreciation in an asset class, followed by a return to rationality when everyone heads for the door and sells. With yields from government bonds at multi-decade lows, this is hardly a risky call. Continue reading →

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